Fearless
by SeungSeiRan
Summary: Hearts pound, voices hush themselves in case anyone hears, eyes close so that hands can hold and grasp what they've missed out on. Hwoarang x Julia.


**A pointless thing really but I'm pretty much on a roll.**

**Disclaimer:**** Refer dictionary.**

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Midnight stars. Inky-blue sky. Sounds of silence echoing in the air. Fluorescent fireflies buzzing through vibrant neon signs in dingy bars. Light-haired girls with moss-green eyes wandering, lost and lonely, through streets as dank as holes, looking out for signs of missing lovers wearing broad grins and thick jackets to protect them from the biting cold. These visions and more are erased from his mind with a breath that wipes away the cigarette smoke from the corners of his eyes. He winces at the reality and lets out another puff, recreating the same pictures before him over and over until he remembers the dreams he's often thought about.

Her fingers dance on ebony and ivory keys, en pointe, performing plies like ballerinas on display. Her neck arches down to the performance unwinding to herself and her abstract audience, each lost in his or her own thoughts. Brown, plaited hair coiled around that pale neck, draping the whiteness of her dress. Dark brown eyes sparkle and dim in the flickering light of the pub she resides part-time in. Another night, another endless sonata. Maybe more of an a capella on her part. Just her, just the notes rising from under the tips of her fingers...

The second hand reaches the twelve and she sighs. The spell breaks, the magic ends. Cinderella slips out of her dress and glass slippers. The piano lets a creak escape from beneath its lid as it dies for the night. Inanimate object, unable to speak or sing. Cinderella trudges home and crawls into bed, waiting for the next night of release. Until then, her dreams fly out of reach from her grasp, into the sky where stars and planets collide in a fusion of color and fables. Tales of hunters with silver cross-bows and steeds with snow white wings as wide as the horizon over the sea.

Until then, she'll wait.

Prince Charming remains a figment of a little girl's imagination, perfect and clean, everything he's not. Every alternate night, he arrives in solitude for lack of an understanding companion. A tall, lean figure in denim and leather, not at all romantic or heroic. Barely even a frog who needs an enchanted kiss from a princess. He's just a broken, lonely soldier beneath his black armor of confident alacrity and calculated acts of daredevilry. He won't say a word as he sits and watches her tell her wordless story of hope, pain, remorse, and beauty beyond the earth and mind.

She glimpses his crimson locks and amber eyes, takes note of their presence, and plays her heart's song. Questions of life bud and bloom from the notes and scales, fed to grow by the smoke and sorrows of those gathered around her. They reveal more stories of loss and loneliness in the dark minus the voices needed to breathe life into them. She steps in for them, plying their strings, coaxing a few hesitant words from dry, cracked throats. Their pain becomes hers, painting wet black pictures on her skin, reborn as haunting symphonies which bring tears to her eyes as she washes them clean.

The art of healing becomes her. By day, her skin glows with the warmth of the sun, creeping through her t-shirts and jeans. She smiles softly and laughs carefully behind her hands and glasses. As night sets in, the jeans and glasses are cast aside for chiffon dresses and faded ballet slippers. The laughing ceases, she's ready to listen and be listened to in return. Her songs for theirs. Her heart for their memories.

And yet he still hangs on to them, clutching them close to him for fear that they escape and contaminate the opaque purity that she creates for them. The purity is dainty and delicate like the ribbon which she sometimes wears in her hair at the end of her long braid. The touch of whimsy is an ironic twist to an otherwise jaded atmosphere. A smidgen of innocence in a tainted world of harsh secrets and gentle lies.

She'd never been good at actually voicing out her feelings. Things like 'I'm sorry', 'I miss you', 'We need to talk', and 'I love you' were never easy to say. Especially when her shyness clung onto her like a plague. Fears of abandonment and chastisement freeze her throat and tongue, muting her when emotions rose to a high. So she remains silent, venting through means of pen, paper, and piano. Silent notes deafen her ears, comforting her, wrapping her up in ethereal bliss for as long as reality permits her.

Think of the sky, she tells herself. Think of the blue, blue sky and the deep, deep ocean. Where the birds and fish flow through freely. Through puffy white clouds and mauve-colored coral reefs. Find yourself in the lyrics of your heart. Listen to their pain, cleanse it from their hearts. Fingers dance, let the music fly above the smoke, let it rain down on them and purify the raw , infected wounds. Lose yourself to the music, sonata, tune, symphony, song, instrumental... just drown in it.

He watches on, fascinated.

She knows all their stories without even asking for them. She knows of the blue-eyed blond man who wanders in through the chill, searching for himself in her eyes. With a shake of her head, she gently pushes him away. She isn't prepared for a commitment tonight. She knows of the dark-haired stranger who broods in the shadows, waiting for a girl of long, endless limbs and tanned skin to forget her promises of joyful matrimony and guide him out of his self-imposed exile. She knows of that woman in scarlet who adorns masks of coquetry and glee to disguise her true scars caused by hate and revenge.

She listens to their silent pleas to be heard.

"_Come on, let's get away for awhile. Just you and me."_

"_She's late. Not that I blame her..."_

"_Why so melancholy, dearest? So young at that. Now if you were me..."_

She nods, smiles, and sighs right on cue. Life is a stage and she is but a mere extra, letting the other more colorful actors play their parts. Her own story remains a myth etched in mystery, locked in a box, free from the gaze of prying eyes.

Eyes like his. Smoldering with a dying fire, embers reigniting as he recognizes it in hers.

Her appearance puzzles him to no end. In turns, she's lovely, then plain, then a bit of both. He would've thought it was him but he hadn't been drinking. If women were alcohol and if alcohol was a drug, then he'd been clean and sober for weeks. His head was clear for the first time in a long while. Breathing in the smoke and sorrows of others as destitute as him, it spins again.

As is their routine, she asks him and he refuses.

What confuses him more is why he ends up here in the first place. His world is a blur of strings and guitar wails interspersed with thunderous drumming and moaning basses. Rough and raw, the brutality is sheer brilliance in itself. But here he is, succumbing to gentle notes, twinkling softly, yet hitting him where it hurt the most. The fears quell for a moment, his hands grip his glass, the cool liquid quenches the aridity.

She smiles and a faint heat rises in his cheeks.

He can't comprehend as to why he always finds himself at her stockinged feet, eager for more, like a child begging for one more story before bedtime. To be sure, he'd never had a music-box as a kid. She was a fine substitute. No, better than a substitute, she was the real thing. No, not real. Ephemeral perhaps. About as real as a dream.

She sighs and he forgets about it.

Much to his irritation, his mind drifts to her hands gliding over the monochrome keys in pensive rhythm. Much to her dismay, she finds herself doing the same to his own hands, clasped around the cold, wet glass. He follows her gaze and examines them. Creases of skin, an oft-ignored birthmark on his left palm, a healing cut from another battle on the streets. He sees the look in her eyes and stares right back, testing her resolve. In a matter of seconds, she passes.

Night after night, he narrates his tales of sweaty wars and the legends of the bruises on his skin. She pictures the blood speckling his face, bones breaking under pressure, and fast, loose women in fast cars. When she shudders, he begins to regret. Before he leaves though, she tells him she's alright...

He doubts it but she's willing to give it a try.

For a few hours, he swallows down his fears for a chance at redemption. She pushes her own aside for a chance to help another lost soul. It's a selfless way for her to live her life and she bleeds dearly for it. Yet it's a hurt she needs. For a few hours, she knows she's not entirely useless in the judging eyes of the world. She's a Healer without powers, a Sister with no kin, a Poet with no direction. The plain little daisy blooms to a rose red as love. She's not a doormat anymore, she's an enchantress, bewitching and bewildering in her strength of observation and empathy.

He lays down his sword at her feet and looks up into her eyes. The tears sting and she runs off into the night. The clock strikes twelve and the magic is over. She sobs into her pillow through to the morning, ashamed at her weakness. She'd been struck down by fright and had chosen to flee. Love was only a thing she'd heard of in fairy-tales. She closes her eyes and tries to forget his crimson locks and amber eyes. Forget, she commands herself. Forget the hurt in his eyes when you ran off, forget that he bared his soul to you, forget that you wanted what he wanted from you...

In an apartment across town, he storms through rooms and slams doors behind him in volcanic rage. He hates her for ensnaring him in her trap and making him recall. He hates himself for falling for her innocuous charm. As he wipes the sweat from his brow, he cries out like a wounded animal. This time, it is not from his skin that he bleeds from...

* * *

On a bleak, starless night, she plays. Fingers dancing in mournful clarity, eyes cast down on her sad tale. The audience murmurs in sympathy, wondering at the sudden vagueness in her demeanor. She may bring to mind images of a French marionette doll in her dainty cream dress with lace trimming, white satin ribbon hanging limply from the end of her plait. The song is tainted with a memory of a startling, short-lived love affair and a kiss that never materialized. She tries to press the sounds of snarling guitars and mysterious basses into her tune but it all falls apart into a haze.

She wasn't meant to fly, she realizes. Even Cinderella is only a scullery maid at heart. The higher you got, the harder it hurt when you fell. After all, she was just an extra in the whole production. Her part was over. Exit stage left...

The door creaks open.

Crimson locks.

Amber eyes.

He stumbles in, bruised and bloodied, eyes stained black. In an instant, she's leapt off stage and rushed to him. A stream of words escapes her lips, none of which makes any sense to her. The red blinds her for a moment, she doesn't notice him raise his head and capture her lips in his. She tastes blood. After it's over, a trail of vermilion trails down one side of her mouth. He falls, slumps to the floor, hands tracing her form, tasting the warmth, lips staining her dress with splotches of scarlet...

She kneels down, choking on tears. The fears collapse like paper castles, reckless courage seeping in. Hearts pound, voices hush themselves in case anyone hears, eyes close so that hands can hold and grasp what they've missed out on. In that moment, they are truly fearless.

She brushes her forehead against his and he thanks her silently.


End file.
